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MALVERN CONCERT CLUB |
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Mikhail
Kopelman violin Founded by experienced chamber musicians steeped in the standards and style of the classic Russian school, the Kopelman Quartet carries forward a rich inheritance of technical excellence, lyricism, grace and musical integrity. Mikhail
Kopelman, Boris Kuschnir, Igor Sulyga and Mikhail Milman all graduated from the
Moscow Conservatoire in the 1970's, this institution's golden age, when the
students regularly worked with musicians and teachers such as David Oistrakh,
Boris Belenky, Yuri Yankelevich, Fyodor Druzhinin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Mstislav
Rostropovich and Natalia Gutman. These strong musical influences have remained
with the members of the Kopelman Quartet, even though they pursued individual
careers for twenty-five years before founding the quartet in 2002. Mikhail Kopelman, first violin, was the renowned leader of the Borodin Quartet for twenty years, and was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Award and the Concertgebouw Silver Medal of Honour. Boris Kuschnir, second violin, is a distinguished teacher whose pupils include Julian Rachlin and Nikolai Znaider. Igor Sulyga, viola, played for twenty years with Vladimir Spivakov, in the Moscow Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra and in his string quartet. As founding members of the Moscow String Quartet, both Boris Kuschnir and Igor Sulyga worked with Dmitri Shostakovich on his late quartets. Mikhail Milman, cello, was for twenty years principal cellist of the Moscow Virtuosi and collaborated frequently with the Borodin Quartet in concerts and recordings. The common roots and background of the musicians enabled the Kopelman Quartet quickly to grow to maturity, and their Edinburgh Festival concert, just one year after their foundation, received extraordinary reviews, referring to "every hallmark of distinguished musicianship" and "great humanity in the finesse of their playing". Now established as significant chamber ensemble, the quartet has played at many major international venues, including the Musikverein, Vienna, and appears regularly at venues such as the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam and the Wigmore Hall, London. They have played with artists such as Elisabeth Leonskaja, Mischa Maisky and Julian Rachlin. Two recordings by the Kopelman Quartet were released in 2006: on Nimbus Records, Prokofiev's 2nd string quartet and Shostakovich's 7th and 3rd; and on Wigmore Live, Tchaikovsky's 3rd string quartet and Schubert's string quartet D810, Death and the Maiden. Further recordings are in preparation. The
Kopelman Quartet has given concerts in the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal,
Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland,
Slovakia, Cyprus, the United States, Canada and Russia; festivals in which they
have played include the Edinburgh International Festival, the Valladolid
Festival, the Zurich Festival and the Ravinia Festival in the United States. |
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